The Second Life Herald recently ran a post about designer ‘Rach Snookums’ who, SLH writer ‘Seola Sassoon’ (also an in-world designer) alleged, “blatantly ripped items from many popular designers” and sold them in-world.

The Second Life Herald post (which incorrectly identifies the alleged infringer’s avatar as ‘Rach Snookem’) is available here.

Virtually Blind contacted ‘Snookums,’ who admitted that “most of the design” for one hairstyle line (which she has since pulled from inventory) “was based on another designer.”

She said that she did not intend to violate anyone’s intellectual property rights, and that everything she currently sells is designed by herself and her partner. ‘Snookums’ also pointed out that many hairstyles, shoes, and clothing designs in Second Life are very similar. “I guess at the time I didn’t see the problem of modeling off another design,” ‘Snookums’ said.

According to ‘Snookums,’ the potentially infringing designs were removed from her inventory “about a day, at the most” after she started receiving complaints.

The SLH post also claimed that ‘Snookums’ banned designers from her shop to keep them from seeing her designs, but ‘Snookums’ said that she started banning people from her store only after posts about the controversy began appearing on the web. According to ‘Snookums,’ after the story broke, she was banned from many designers’ parcels, and about sixty Sellers Guild members came to her shop and were abusive to her customers.

“I didn’t ban people because I was hiding anything,” ‘Snookums’ says. “I got a little defensive and banned people who banned me first, and people who were misbehaving.”

Just a quick note to let regular readers know that my wife and I are moving this week, so I’ll be unavailable for a bit. Posting will resume shortly from Boise, Idaho.

In the meantime, you can check out this Reason article and the posts linked there for an interesting social-science take on virtual worlds (or, as the writers put it, “the permanent virtual corporate carnival.”) Thanks to Josh for the link.

Also, I just realized that I owe a few readers accreditations for sending me heads-up emails over the last few weeks, so I’ll append my earlier posts to add credit where credit is due.

Virtually Blind periodically runs “quicklinks” — items that are not long enough for a full story, but are worth a click. Here’s the current batch:

Slashdot reports that eBay is enforcing a ban on auctions for virtual property in multiplayer games like World of Warcraft, City of Heroes, and others, but has specifically exempted property in Second Life from the ban. It will be interesting to see how the market breaks down after this. There are a half-dozen fairly well known virtual property auction sites that have been living on eBay scraps for the last decade. One of them, or somebody new, should come out of this looking pretty good.

The Second Life Herald rants about knock-offs of well-known Second Life hairstyle designs. Virtually Blind will be exploring the question of copyright protection for virtual hairstyles in the next couple of weeks. No, seriously. Quit laughing. It’s not as simple as it seems.

PopMatters says that “Second Life is being hailed as the next MySpace.” Well, no one is quoted who actually says that, but maybe that’s the point of PopMatters – it gets to pick. Three thoughts. First, hear that sound? Way off, but getting closer? That’s the beginning of the backlash. Second, they could be right. I recently overheard two teenage girls on a bus in San Francisco: “Do do you, like, have one of those Second Life things? I don’t, like, pay. Just the free, like, thing, you know?” Third, this matters because kids are followed by regulation and legislation. What were the last five stories you read about MySpace? I bet at least four of them included the words “undercover detective.”

Seems Sweden will be the first nation to open an embassy in Second Life.

Website “The Local” reports that Swedish Institute director Olle Wästberg told news agency AFP that Sweden is “planning to establish a Swedish embassy in Second Life” to provide passport information and “act as a link to web-based information about the Scandinavian country.”

The embassy “would not provide passports or visas, but would instruct visitors how to obtain such documents in the real world.”

About Virtually Blind

From early 2007 to late 2008, Virtually Blind covered legal news, issues, and events that impact virtual worlds, video games, and the 3D internet. The site is no longer updated, though it remains online as a research resource.

Posts and comments on VB were and are not offered as legal advice, and are not confidential attorney-client communication. Posts and comments reflect only the opinion of the author, and do not necessarily represent the opinion of VB's editor, other contributors, sponsors, or any author's employer.